Forsaken: The Edge of Everything

Cara Delgado

California State Senator for the 17th District

Description:

“How nice the gentleman from Orange County has time to filibuster. Most of my constituents are paid by the hour.”

Bio:

California’s 17th State Senate District stretches from the southern Bay Area to the northern central coast, encompassing Santa Cruz, Monterey, and Carmel, as well as about 10% of San Jose. Cara Luisa Delgado has spent the past six in the State Senate watching her constituents drop from among the highest tax brackets to the depressed dumps with the inlanders. A promising and ambitious legislator when elected, she has become harried and worn-down, her forward-looking ideas replaced with a bulldog devotion to keeping her people safe and sated.

Hailing from San Luis Obispo, Senator Delgado has always had mixed feelings about her district’s largest city, Santa Cruz. These suspicions were only exacerbated when the Cruzers adapted to the Second Depression by becoming “Atlantic City on the Pacific.” As Senator, she supported efforts to investigate corruption in the city, only to back off when threatened with a primary opponent in 2018. This public flinch in the face of backlash emboldened her political enemies, who now like to call her “The Senator from Sin-City-by-the-Sea.”

Cara Delgado remains a dutiful and compassionate public servant, tough on crime but generous to the disenfranchised. She may not be gubernatorial timber anymore, but she can hold her own with any of the power-players in Sacramento, even if every political knife-fight turns another few black hairs gray.